Christendom’s Great Unwashed

Modern individualism has resulted in a dislocated society, but ancient or medieval corporatism is not the solution to it. The Bible deals with people as individuals and as groups, so neither “ism” is a solution to the other. An understanding of the one and the many based on biblical theology reveals both “isms” to be unnecessary enemies. So then, what accounts for the fundamental difference in baptismal theologies? The answer is that history is chiastic. Circumcision was a corporate sign whose telos was the personal faith of each Jew, making him or her a “Jew indeed.” Baptism is the opposite. It begins with the believer as a “Jew indeed,” the individual with the circumcised heart, and gathers them into a prophetic body. The telos of circumcision was faith, conversion. The telos of baptism is not faith but resurrection.

This helps us to understand Peter Leithart’s recent lament concerning Presbyterians whose theology, despite the claims at the font, is functionally baptistic. He is right that they are being inconsistent and illogical, but they are, by godly instinct, being inconsistent and illogical with their defective theology. Presbyterians must sense at some level that the doctrine of paedofaith has no clothes.

Logic is fine if we start off with a correct definition of baptism. So, to deal with Leithart’s flawless logic, we must attack his flawed foundation. He writes:

In ancient Israel, the vast majority of those circumcised were circumcised as infants. If one were developing a theology of circumcision, it wouldn’t make sense to focus on the comparatively rare adolescent or adult circumcisions. What is normal in practice would naturally be the norm of theology.

Firstly, as I have claimed before, paedobaptism requires a misunderstanding of both circumcision and baptism in order to create this double-minded hybrid which would better be termed as bap-cision. Pitting adolescent/adult circumcisions against that of infants reveals Leithart’s unwitting sleight of hand at the outset. In seeking for some kind of “norm” in the age of circumcision, Leithart ignores the very purpose of circumcision so that our baptismal debate can be wedged into it. The truth is that baptism has an entirely different purpose from circumcision.

I am sure that Leithart would respond that age was irrelevant when it came to circumcision, and he would be correct, but it does not follow that age is irrelevant when it comes to baptism. This is because circumcision was about physical generations, a separate family tree, and baptism is about an oath of allegiance which renders one’s heredity redundant.1Jordan claims that paedobaptism renders heredity redundant, but if this is the case, why is one particular baby qualified and another disqualified for baptism? A sign that renders heredity/tribe redundant that is yet limited to or demarcated by heredity/tribe defies basic logic and reveals the level to which a paradigm can pervert our thinking. It is not only logic but plain common sense that has its throat slit at the almighty altar of the bap-cision font. The Abrahamic promises concerned the fruit of the land and the fruit of the womb. For the life of the world, Israel would bear two of the sanctions pronounced in Genesis 3 and reverse them by faith. The norm of circumcision had nothing to do with age simply because its qualifications related to one’s sex.

The Abrahamic miracle was the reversal of barren wombs, not some miraculous “paedofaith” possessed either from birth or circumcision. And, of course, the argument falls apart when the fact that females were not circumcised is factored in, revealing that the rite had nothing to do with personal faith but with a familial, then tribal, then national, identity.2Some have claimed that Levitical purification rites for females somehow served as Covenant markers, but the claim is ridiculous since these rites were introduced over four centuries after circumcision. Once again, paedobaptists come to the Bible with an agenda rather than allowing the Bible to dictate their agenda. Gentiles could certainly join or marry into Israel, but the foundation of the separation remained the setting apart of sacrificial flesh.

In the two-millennia history of the church, the vast majority of those baptized were baptized as infants. Yet, baptismal theology is often developed, even among paedobaptists, as if infant baptism were the exception rather than the rule. What is normal in practice should be the norm of theology.

Jordan and Leithart tell us that when it comes to the other sacrament, communion, theology defines practice. But Leithart has to consult historical practice to defend the supposed “norm” of paedobaptism. Baptists cannot make this claim, certainly, but they simply point to the New Testament Scriptures, the same place Jordan and Leithart rely on for the “norm” of the eucharist. Now, certainly, there is the possibility that once the first baptisms were carried out, the “norm” became generational, as it did with circumcision, and that adult baptisms were few and far between, like they are in paedobaptist churches. The problem with this claim is that we are given very different qualifications for baptism, and, as mentioned, they relate not to the sanctification of family, tribe, and nation but their subversion! The rite serves as a public profession of faith, in which the individual, the one, pledges allegiance to the only Israelite flesh which matters, He who was set apart as a sacrifice and “cut off” for all in the flesh, the true Isaac, the promised Seed. To be frank, it blows me away that paedobaptists claim that baptism is not circumcision and yet rely so consistently upon its practice as support for their mistaken tradition.

Yes, the vast majority of the church was bap-cised, but if we are still in the early days of Christianity, these are the foibles of the Church’s childhood. The fact is that Christendom has come to an end, having served its purpose, and a rite that is familial or civic in nature is now more clearly than ever revealed to be redundant. Worse, if the vast majority of the church was bap-cised, they were never truly baptised, which includes many Christians today. Dr Leithart has never been baptised, and many Christians in paedobaptist churches have never witnessed a real baptism. This might sound offensive, but it is the same kind of lament as Leithart’s, just based on a firm foundation — a more biblical theology. The forerunners of baptism were different from circumcision. They were the rites which spoke of a circumcision of heart, the various Covenant vows and priestly investitures, including the robe with blue tassels worn by all adult Israelites to remind them of the laws of God. None of these had anything to do with infants, since they concerned qualification for ministry in various capacities.

Of course, Leithart does appeal to Scripture, but through the lens of his prejudice concerning bap-cision.

In some traditions, this appears in a disjunction between what the New Testament asserts about baptism and what is said about infants who are baptized. The New Testament says that those who have been baptized have died and been buried with Christ (Romans 6), that baptism saves (1 Peter 3), that baptism clothes the baptized with Christ (Galatians 3).

The texts that Leithart quotes have easy answers in the light the priesthood of Israel. It is the priests who served as living sacrifices. They were the ones whose bodies and clothes were washed, since they were mediators between God and men. Commoners were only sprinkled. The trickiest text is the apostle Peter’s claim that “baptism saves you,” but Leithart’s interpretation is an example of using a single obscure text to skew the meaning of many other clear texts. In context, Peter is simply telling Jewish Christians that baptism replaced all the requirements of the Levitical law under which they were previously bound by oath. They were delivered — “saved” — from the vengeance which would soon be visited upon Jerusalem and its superseded sacrificial system. And finally, Galatians 3 refers to priestly investiture, an idea which can be traced right back to Genesis 3, where Adam failed God and was clothed in death instead of a robe of righteousness. The curse upon his children was collateral damage, as it was for Israel in later history. Baptism is about the oath before heaven. Circumcision was about the sanctions on earth.

Yet, some paedobaptist churches, perhaps especially Reformed churches, refuse to apply the claims of these texts to the children baptized in a straightforward fashion. Even though infants are baptized, we cannot yet say that they have been united to Christ’s death, or clothed with Christ, or saved.

At other times, this ambivalence appears in systematizations of sacramental theology. On the one hand, one makes an argument for infant baptism; on the other hand, a baptismal theology is developed that assumes non-infant baptisms are the norm. If we take convert baptism as the norm, then the relation of faith and baptism will be described in one way. If we take infant baptism as our theological norm, the relation of faith and baptism will appear somewhat different.

I paint in broad strokes. That doesn’t mean my portrait doesn’t capture what it paints.

All this means is that the conflict between Scripture and practice is simply in a difference place for Leithart than it is for other paedobaptists. They are ambivalent about baptism, but Leithart is ambivalent about personal faith. Or perhaps ambivalence is not the correct word in either case. For Leithart, the rivalry between flesh and Spirit simply gets shifted to somewhere more noticeably out of step with the Gospel of Christ, which requires personal repentance and public allegiance. The choice is between a redundant baptism or a redundant Gospel. Leithart chooses the latter, a rite which “objectively” transforms the unwitting into “Christians,” many of whom, for some reason, later struggle to make their faith their own. The true “norm” eventually catches up with errant theology, which is why many Presbyterians minimise that errant theology in practice. At some level, they perceive that a rite concerning the flesh and a rite concerning the heart are mutually exclusive, yet their defiant tradition robs them of a rite that serves the purpose for which the Lord gave us baptism: unashamedly naming Jesus before men that we might not be ashamed before Him in heaven.

Jordan claims that paedobaptism renders heredity redundant, but if this is the case, why is one particular baby qualified and another disqualified for baptism? A sign that renders heredity/tribe redundant that is yet limited to or demarcated by heredity/tribe defies basic logic and reveals the level to which a paradigm can pervert our thinking. It is not only logic but plain common sense that has its throat slit at the almighty altar of the bap-cision font.

Some have claimed that Levitical purification rites for females somehow served as Covenant markers, but the claim is ridiculous since these rites were introduced over four centuries after circumcision. Once again, paedobaptists come to the Bible with an agenda rather than allowing the Bible to dictate their agenda.

Thanks for the link to the video. Doug has blogged the same thing previously, and I’ve covered that on here somewhere. Besides his resorting to a creed rather than Scripture, and his minimising of the universal claim of the New Covenant, what it boils down to is that he thinks baptism has little to do with legal witness and everything to do with hereditary entitlement, so like all paedobaptists he’s off the biblical map on this issue. The only reason these gents have to keep trying to make their system work is the fact that it doesn’t and never will. It’s a bar stool with two legs.

About me

Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.